Community meeting Wednesday to save local radio shows

WXBR 1460, the last Brockton AM station, has gone to an international programming format, but some residents want to keep their favorite shows on the air.

BROCKTON – A meeting will be held Wednesday evening to gather support to save the local programming on WXBR 1460.

City activist Dennis Hursey, working with radio host Ron Van Dam, has organized the meeting at 7 p.m. at George’s Cafe on Belmont Street to gather ideas in an effort to buy the morning block of airtime from WXBR.

“People are laughing at me that I can save the radio station,” Hursey said. “I don’t know if I can, but I’m going to try.”

Local voices are no longer a part of WXBR’s programming after station owner Azure Media LLC announced last week that it is changing to a foreign language format focusing on international paid programming.

Van Dam said he is not sure exactly how much it would cost to buy the morning time, but that it “would not be staggering.” He said Florida-based Azure Media would likely be open to such an arrangement, as it has been at its other stations.

Jhonson Napoleon, president of Azure Media, which bought the station two years ago, has declined to comment on the change at WXBR.

Hursey said he is eager to save the local programming because the city lacks live entertainment and WXBR was Brockton’s last English-language station.

“We don’t have a movie theatre, we don’t have ballroom dancing – radio is live entertainment,” he said. “Not to have a radio station in a city of 100,000 people is ludicrous.”